


I Hope I Can Change the Title Later

by cyne_corner (cynki_rosha)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Awkward Romance, Cutesy shit, Embarrassment, Flirting, M/M, Opposites Attract, Romance, Social Anxiety, Teasing, Tsunderes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:34:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynki_rosha/pseuds/cyne_corner
Summary: Painter Cecil is a loner and anti-social, and eschews positive social contact, even with his coffee shop coworkers. That is, until new cute employee Bryan joins the team and asks him out. Cecil now has to deal with the anxiety of someone liking him--truly liking him--and the sudden draw of maybe no longer being alone
Kudos: 2





	I Hope I Can Change the Title Later

He was cute, endearingly cute. He had one of those big smiles and bright eyes that made you want to tell him everything about your life. He was ultimately approachable and adorable, with soft blond hair and welcoming brown eyes.

And I hated him.

Oh, I hated him.

I hated him with every fiber of my being. How dare he? How dare he be like that, so agreeable, so likeable, and at the same time just be so drop-dead handsome? It wasn't fair.

I hated how he came into work and immediately everybody liked him. I'd been working at this stupid coffee shop for three years now and people still didn't like me. Oh, I knew why. I knew that people weren't into someone brooding, a loner, someone who insisted on being by themselves despite management's regular prodding towards me being someone a little bit more sociable. They tried. My coworkers tried, my managers tried. Hell, even my family had tried. I was the black sheep, a genetic anomaly. My father did politics. My mother did catering. My brothers and sisters were all in the social sphere in some way. They all tried. Everyone tried.

Everyone failed, because I just don't get along with people.

And I hate the people who do get along with others. And I hated that he could just waltz in and be everyone's favorite friend. He even tried to do it to me. He looked at me with those sparkling white teeth and that broad smile and went, "So, what's your story?"

And I hated him from that very moment.

And then I hated him more when my coworkers said, "Oh, don't bother talking to him, he doesn't talk to anyone," and he gave a face like "Oh!" and he walked away from me and he didn't look back. He didn't even try.

And that made me hate him more.

Bryan Whittaker, you're on my shit list.

~

I'd been working at Cafe Vita for three years at this point. It was one of those dead-end jobs that I just kind of slid uselessly into after college. I had started off telling people that I got the job because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. That wasn't really true. I did know what I wanted to do with my life.

I wanted to be left alone.

That's right, I'm one of those people. Everybody had a "those" people. The people who sat in the back of the bus. The people who turned in those dark and disturbing drawings for art class. The people who had to argue with others at the cafeteria and made everybody else leave the table. Those people.

I was one of those people. I always got that look after someone interacted with me the first time. They kind of lean back, and their face turns into this strange combination of disgust and annoyance, and then it comes out, "Oh, you're one of those people".

And you know what? I am one of those people. Cecil Cavendish, one of Those People. I'm here to bring down your day and make you aggravated to be there. I'm there to remind people that, hey, there are some people that are just unlikable, who just take up space but who are annoying about it. I wasn't there to be liked. I wasn't really there for any reason. Most of the time I was there because I needed to, like at work.

I needed money so I could be left alone more frequently, and sadly you needed a related degree to be a mortician. So instead I worked at a coffee shop.

It wasn't my ideal choice of job, but it was close to where I lived, so I could walk there. My managers were nice, and the job wasn't hard, and even I could plaster a smile on my face long enough to hand someone a coffee. And, after a bit, my coworkers started leaving me alone, because they realized that I was one of Those People, and then they started letting the new people know that I was one of Those People, and I got left alone even more.

I was a hard worker, I showed up on time, I covered other people's shifts. I rarely called off because I had nowhere else to be. Management was okay with me. They didn't like me, sure, but I was consistent, and that counted for a lot in the working world. I could fake it for a fraction of a second, and that's about as long as I needed to fake it. Sure, they reminded me sometimes that maybe I could be a little bit nicer to my coworkers, but I didn't want to be. So I didn't.

My managers were mostly okay with that. Only mostly, though.

That definitely didn't stop me from judging the new people, especially new people like Bryan Whittaker, who just show up and immediately everyone likes them. That had never happened to me. I'd never had someone immediately like me upon meeting me. They were almost always friendly, sure, but I could tell. It was a polite kind of friendly, not like an Interested In You kind of friendly. People were interested in Bryan. People were very interested in Bryan. I could tell by the way that the looked at him, with those fawning, adoring faces. It was even more obvious when he got out of training and he started actually helping out. People would order their drinks, and he would be like, "Would you like a bagel with that?" or "We also have freshly baked cookies", and the people would be like "Oh, I don't know, I'm supposed to be on a diet..." and he would say, "It's always nice to treat yourself every once in a while", and the person would be "What the heck, I'll take 80". And it worked. It always worked. Men or women; girls were definitely not immune to his charm.

The one time I tried to upsell a customer she yelled at me that she was gluten free and couldn't eat brownies, and my manager had to get involved. I was politely told that I didn't have to upsell anything any more.

It was aggravating. How did it come so easy to him?

I couldn't help but watch him while he worked, to try to figure out the secret to him being good at his job. But I had no idea. He could say something, and the customer loves it. I could say the same thing, and I'd get a dirty look for it. Was it the power of being blond? I had dark hair my entire life, so maybe that was the secret. Was it being tall? Was it the smile? I couldn't tell. All I knew was that people hated me, and people liked him, and it was so desperately unfair.

But thankfully I didn't have to deal with him outside of work. I could get out and walk home and lock myself in my apartment and watch Youtube videos and paint, and I didn't have to deal with anything from work. It was all empty and pointless anyways. It was just work, so I could just get money, so I could spend another day locked in the dark in my apartment.

At least I got to paint, so at least there was that.

And, really, that counted for a lot. I liked painting. Hell, I loved painting. It was my life, my passion, my reason for existing. When I wasn't busy being angry at my coworkers, that's what I did in my head all the time. I would paint stuff. I would imagine what I wanted to draw, the steps to getting there. What colors I wanted to use, how I wanted to finish it, what I wanted to do with the painting afterwards. I made a little bit of money off my work--not a lot, of course, or else I wouldn't be working at a stupid coffee shop, but just a little bit. A couple of my paintings actually hung in the shop, with prices underneath them. They weren't super expensive, just a couple hundred dollars, and they were labeled as being painted by Anonymous. I didn't want my coworkers to know what I did in my free time. I didn't like to talk to them about the weather, I definitely didn't want to talk to them about anything serious in my life. I didn't sell a lot, but they did help support my takeout lifestyle. I had a shop online that I sometimes sold pieces through, and I had a couple of local art and antique stores that I hung stuff up in. If they sold, the store would get a portion of the sale, generally around a third of the price if I was lucky.

Years ago I wanted to actually hold shows to show off my work, but the one time I tried it fell through. It wasn't because of my work itself, but I just didn't mingle well with people. If you're slapping a face on an artist, the people have to actually like that artist to buy their stuff. So I just remain anonymous for the most part. My coworkers don't know who painted the weird paintings out in the dining room. Only the own of the building knew. And I preferred it that way.

Bryan Whittaker smoothly integrated himself into the job. He was one of the good ones, I could tell, the kind of guy who showed up on time and didn't cause shit while he was at work. He was a lot better than the chick that he replaced, that's for sure. She was always late to work and spent a lot of time fixing her makeup in the bathroom. She was a huge disaster in a way that made me kind of appreciate her. She always made me feel better about my own life, even though she was completely impossible to actually be in the same room with. She wouldn't exactly talk to me, she would just talk around me if I was there. I'd rather be ignored than have someone aggressively hold a conversation with themselves when you were around. I could feel that tense obligation to reply to what she was saying, and at the same time I could tell that she wasn't interested in anything I had to say. It was deeply aggravating, and I was glad when she was finally fired.

Bryan replaced her, and he was a lot better. He never talked to me on our mutual shifts, just talked to the manager or the customers when they were around. And customers loved talking to him, so there wasn't much of a chance for me to talk to him anyways. I was glad for that; I could just focus on making coffee and not have to worry if my service was good enough. He would always to write the customers names on the cups, too, in some fancy, loopy script. It was kind of an unusual sort of handwriting for a guy to have, but I decided that it wasn't my job to care.

It went on for several weeks, and after a month or so it was like the shop had never even ran without Bryan. Everything felt back to normal.

Except for one particular Thursday.

I came in later than usual. For some reason my phone had decided to die, and my natural body rhythm got me up twenty minutes later. It wasn't that bad, and I texted the manager on duty that I was going to be a little bit late. She was okay with it, and I rolled into the store five minutes after it had opened for service, missing the whole of opening duties.

I was very rarely late, but I had been late a couple of times in those three years. Generally people didn't make much of a fuss. If you were well-liked, the coworkers would tease you a little bit, "Ooh, someone's late!". Since no one liked me I never got that, but it still wasn't that big of a deal.

Upon walking through the front door, I knew something was different. Everyone behind the counter looked up at me, stared for a fraction of a second, and then aggressively walked away. As I walked across the dining room I could tell something was up from the way that everyone was avoiding me. People didn't look at me normally. People also didn't avoid looking at me normally.

I scanned everyone, trying to figure out what on earth was going on. I was fairly certain that I wasn't in trouble, since I had messaged my manager just a half-hour ago and she said that everything was okay. I frowned and went into the employee break room.

The break room was a small little room behind the counter with a couple of couches and a small television. Along one wall was lockers for people to put their things in during their shift. And on my locker someone drew something in sharpie.

It was a giant heart.

I felt a flush rise to my neck. I yanked the door open and tossed my bag with my lunch in there. Why was there a giant heart on my locker? I tried to remember where the cleaning solution was when I noticed something taped on the inside of my locker door. I couldn't stop my hand from shaking as I plucked the note off the door and slowly unfolded it.

In familiar handwriting it said, "I like you, will you please go out with me?".

I slumped against the rows of lockers. What on earth?

I folded the note and looked up at the ceiling real quick just to reorient myself. What on earth? This was a weird dream, definitely not the kind that I usually got.

I took a deep breath and looked back down at the note. It said the same thing.

I like you.

Will you please go out with me?

Someone liked me? Like, liked me in a going-out kind of way? And that person was Bryan Whittaker?

Bryan Whittaker wanted to go out with me?

I studied the writing. It was definitely his handwriting. And it was written on the store's notepad paper, which had the letterhead up at the top. Heat sat aggressively in my cheeks, and a strange nervous feeling of irritation twisted in my stomach. He liked me? Since when? Why? How? I clenched the note slightly, wrinkling it. Was this some kind of weird joke? It was very high school if it was. I would have thought that Bryan would have grown out of it. It wasn't subtle, either, with a big stupid heart plastered across my locker that I would not have to clean up.

I glanced over at his locker. He had been here long enough that I knew his schedule. He didn't work on Thursdays, but he did help close on Wednesdays. He probably did this after we had closed and almost everyone else had left. Everyone else behind the counter looked awkward about it, so maybe they didn't know who had drawn the heart on my locker. They probably didn't know who left the note behind, either; it wasn't signed. Maybe they didn't even know there was a note.

I crumpled up the note and tossed it behind my bag and shut the locker door. I had already spent long enough back in the break room, I needed to get to work.


End file.
